Wireless local area networks (“WLANs”) can give clients the ability to “roam” or physically move from place to place without being connected by wires. In the context of a WLAN, the term “roaming” describes the act of physically moving between wireless access devices, which may be stand-alone wireless access points or wireless access ports that cooperate with one or more wireless switches located in the WLAN. Many deployments of wireless computer infrastructure, such as WLANs, involve the use of multiple wireless switches serving a number of wireless access devices. Conventional networks having multiple wireless switches and multiple wireless access devices do not automatically or intelligently distribute the access devices among the switches. Rather, upon initialization or reset of a wireless access device, one common adoption technique simply searches for the first available wireless switch that can adopt the access device. Although simple in design, this technique can lead to an uneven distribution of access devices among the switches.
Prior art WLANs may utilize access control lists that restrict certain wireless access devices from being adopted by a particular wireless switch. Configuring these access control lists is a manual, time consuming process, and the access control lists do not result in a dynamic or intelligent adoption scheme that provides automatic load balancing and redundancy. Indeed, such access control lists may actually prevent “backup” wireless switches from adopting wireless access devices that are adopted by a failed wireless switch. Thus, if one of the switches fails, the access devices supported by that switch may idle in a disconnected state, resulting in poor wireless coverage for client devices.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have an automatic and intelligent technique for the adoption of wireless access devices by wireless switches in a computer network. In addition, it is desirable to have an automatic adoption technique that results in load balancing among wireless switches in the computer network. It is also desirable to have an automatic adoption technique that provides redundancy in the event of failure of one of the wireless switches in the computer network. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.